About this collection

Steve Perille is a prolific photographer and an award winning photojournalist. While working for The Charlotte Observer, he was the 1975 Southern Photographer of the Year, but his images are more about the social landscape than hard news.

Perille, a native of Wisconsin, was introduced to photography as a young boy by his uncle, Jim Mescal, who was a photographer for The Chicago Sun-Times.

Perille attended the Milwaukee Institute of Technology and later was a staff photographer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He became a staff photographer for The Charlotte Observer in 1972. One short year later, Perille and two other photographers were featured in the first exhibition at The Light Factory in its first home, a second floor gallery of an old house on Torrence Street.

Perille left the Observer to pursue other interests in 1983, but still lives in the Charlotte area.